Hi EP,
About three years ago, I quit drinking for a year. Early in my sobriety, whenever, I went to a social occasion with a bar, I would state to the server, with confidence and authority, that I don't drink. Then I would request that the bartender surprise me with an interesting non-alcoholic cocktail and put it in a fun glass. I enjoyed not knowing what I was going to get; it made it a little exciting and interesting. Lots of times my experience was that the bartenders liked the challenge and would create all kinds of cool flavours. Sometimes I would make it about colour..ie. make me something red or green etc, sometimes I made it about flavour..like make it sweet or savoury and sometimes I didn't make any parameters at all...just surprise me. That always added a specialness to my night out.
I was my sister's maid of honour during this time period. She asked the venue if I could have dealcoholized wine brought in for the night and they agreed. Now I know there are many recovering alocoholics who frown on drinking dealcoholized wine or beer. They say that is romancing the drink or that it still has .05% alcohol in it so it could trigger a relapse. I respect and understand those opinions and don't want to start an debate here on your thread. I will only say that for me, that helped me at the wedding and I did not relapse after that ( I did relapse eventually but 7 months later). When the waiter refilled the other wedding party members' wine glasses with the real stuff, he refilled mine with the 'faker.' So my lack of drinking did not stand out at all. No one even noticed. I didn't offer an explanation for why I wasn't drinking if anyone did; I simply stated that I don't drink. There is strength in making that statement amd leaving it at that.
The venue also delivered signature shooters for the head table that tasted like those chocolate maraschino candies. The bartender went out of his way to create a virgin one for me that had exactly the same flavour. I didn't even ask for that; the server just told me that the bartender wanted to and that he had experimented over and over to get the taste right for me.
I had a great time at my sisters wedding. I danced my face off, I laughed and laughed and I blessedly woke up the next day not hungover and enjoyed attending a breakfast party at the hotel without feeling like hung over crap. It was great. There has never been a time when I looked back at my sisters wedding and said to myself, ' I wish I could have drank at that.' There has been a time when I looked back at my cousin's wedding, which was the year before and during which I drank my face off, did some ridiculous drunken things that seemed fun at the time but were embarrassing the next day, , and attended the next day breakfast in a horrible state of hungover illness, and have said to myself, ' I wish I didn't drink at that wedding.'
I know that others reading this might feel that these strategies were romancing the drink but I only used them early in my sobriety at the time when I needed to have this plan for myself to discreetly not drink and to feel I was fitting in socially without drawing attention to myself. When I became stronger I didn't need these strategies anymore and was quite happy to just drink water at social occasions.